Page 22

Frontiers July 2016 Issue

22
1933
Model 247 commercial
transport
The Boeing Model 247
is the world’s first
modern airliner.
the enterprise like never before, he said.
Taking modeling one step further, Grandine
said digital manufacturing might be a far
more involved process in the future, both in
customizing the airplane build and possibly
replacing all tooling. He envisions more
concentrated 3-D printing on the assembly line.
“I suspect we’re still decades away
from this, but imagine taking the design of
an airplane to a factory-sized 3-D printer
by which employees literally print the
entire airplane in that spot, roll it out and
fly it away,” he said.
Lasers will become smaller and
be more powerful as the technology
continues to evolve over the next couple
of decades, according to Harold Schall,
Boeing Laser & Electro-Optical Systems
chief engineer and Senior Technical Fellow
in Albuquerque, N.M.
Schall was part of the Star Wars
program, which began in the 1980s and
later led to tests of a laser anti-ballistic
missile system on a modified 747. In
the future, he said, Boeing’s unmanned
aerial systems might rekindle this type of
defense effort—with a much smaller laser.
“You could put a laser on a Boeing
unmanned vehicle and advances could be
made where you will be able to get enough
power in that laser to go back and do the Star
Wars mission on that platform, only more
efficiently and with smaller volume,” Schall
said. “It could be a high-altitude vehicle that
will stay up for days to protect the country.”
Emily Howard is a human factors
engineer and Senior Technical Fellow
based in Huntington Beach, Calif.,
who specializes in human information
processing. Her job is to help ensure that
everything Boeing develops—products,
tools and services—enables employees
and customers to be effective, efficient and
safe. “My work is not rocket science, but
it is based on brain science, and the next
century will see a tremendous change in
how we understand, harness and amplify
the power of the human brain,” she said.
Almost everything being built these
days has a sensor, a display, a network,
Howard noted. Technology of all kinds
revolves around the increasing hunger for
information and machines are becoming
more involved in everyday decision-making,
in geometric modeling and numerical
analysis and a Senior Technical Fellow in
Seattle, also takes a page from Star Trek
when talking about the future. He and his
team members create virtual simulations
that can make airplane production
prototypes unnecessary and, in turn, save
significant cost. The downside is modeling
can take months, even years, to complete.
Grandine also sees future modeling
becoming more in tune with something
featured in Star Trek, where new devices
are created almost instantaneously using
verbal commands to a computer.
He also envisions Boeing someday
having the ability to link all of its hundreds
of thousands of laptops and computers
into one data stream, using an automated
process turned on by something as simple
as a screen saver and scanning for ideas
and designs. They would be filtered for
compatibility, connecting everyone across
4 Difficult manufacturing tasks could
be performed by a riveting robot.
5 This artist’s concept depicts a
wiring robot.